FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT F 16 - PAGE 3

An F-16 fighter jet crashed Wednesday in the Atlantic about 35 miles off Myrtle Beach, authorities said. The pilot safely ejected from the aircraft. The jet was on a training mission from Shaw Air Force Base near Sumter when it went down around 5:40 p.m., Air Force Lt. Bryan Cox said. The pilot, identified as Capt. Theodore Schultz of the 55th Fighter Squadron, was rescued about two hours after the crash, officials said. He was stable and being taken to a Charleston hospital for additional treatment, officials said.

U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley said Sunday that he expects a long-delayed deal to sell 80 F-16 warplanes to the United Arab Emirates would be completed. "I believe that order will be fulfilled. They are finalizing a contract. These are rather difficult negotiations as you can imagine, rather costly," he said after delivering a speech at the Dubai Chamber of Commerce. "We expect to see that transaction move forward. I would have liked to be able to have seen an F-16 here at this point.

In the third military crash in Georgia in a week, an Air Force pilot parachuted to safety before his F-16 fighter went down in a remote swamp Monday. The jet crashed about 20 miles north of Moody Air Force Base in south Georgia's largely rural Atkinson County, said a base spokesman. 1st Lt. Joseph Thomas, the pilot, appeared to be in good condition, the spokesman said. He was picked up by loggers and treated at the base hospital. The cause of the crash wasn't known. The single-seater was en route to a bombing range north of the base for a training mission.

With the shrinkage of the Pentagon budget, defense contractors are marketing their weapons with arguments so brazen that a new term is needed: warnography. Just as pornography is eroticism to the point of obscenity, warnography is advocacy to the point of offensiveness. The latest centerfold from the military-industrial complex is a full-page advertisement for the F-16, built by St. Louis-based General Dynamics Corp. The ad features an F-16 screeching right toward the reader, its underwing pylons loaded with auxiliary fuel tanks and air-to-ground missiles.

The F-16 Fighting Falcon is probably the most maneuverable aircraft in operation, says Capt. Tom McCloskey. And much of that versatility and flexibility is due to the plane's digital flight control system, he says. "The bottom line is performance," says McCloskey, who has more than 1,200 hours of flying time in the plane. "The pilot puts information into a computer. The computer knows the aircraft's capability, and it takes that information plus the pilot's input and uses it to achieve maximum performance.

Israelis witnessed the second chapter of a riveting tragedy Sunday when the crash of an F-16 fighter-bomber killed the pilot son of Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who died in the Columbia space shuttle disaster of 2003. Radio and television stations interrupted their programming to report the death of air force Lt. Assaf Ramon, 21, and convey emotional responses by the nation's leaders. Some newscasters wore black. "There are few moments in which personal pain rips so powerfully through the nation's heart," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said from Cairo.

A senior U.S. defense official said Thursday that Washington is considering an appeal from Pakistan for F-16 fighter aircraft, a request that has received a muted response from the United States in previous years. U.S. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith would not say whether the two sides were close to a deal. Washington recently agreed to sell $1.2 billion in weapons to Pakistan, but the deal doesn't include the F-16 aircraft that Islamabad has long desired.

President Hugo Chavez warned Tuesday that he might share Venezuela's U.S.-made F-16 fighters with Cuba and China, accusing the United States of making it difficult for his country to obtain spare parts for the aircraft. Chavez claimed the U.S. broke a contract to supply parts for Venezuela's fleet of 21 F-16s and pressured other countries not to help maintain them. "We can do whatever we want with the planes. Maybe we'll send 10 to Cuba, or maybe to China so that they can see the technology," said Chavez, a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Egypt buys more F-16s: General Dynamics Corp. said Egypt signed an agreement for an additional 46 F-16 fighter planes, with a value of more than $1.5 billion. The new order follows last week's announcement by South Korea that it intends to purchase 120 additional F-16 aircraft.

Lockheed seeks F-16 deal: Lockheed Martin Corp. said Thursday it would invest in Hungary an amount equal to the purchase price of its F-16s, should the country opt for the jet fighters. The company confirmed that the fly-away purchase price of an F-16 is $24 million, but the actual price would depend on the size of the order. Lockheed Martin is competing for business in central Europe against McDonnell Douglas Corp., maker of the F-18 Hornet, Sweden's SAAB, which makes the Gripen, and France's Mirage.